Full-Text Articles in Political Science

The Ideology Of Free Trade And The Cuba Exception, Michael C. Schena

LSU Master's Theses

This paper examines ideology and congressional roll call voting in the post-Cold War period (1991-2005) on free trade and trade policy with Cuba. While members with a more conservative ideology are found, as expected, to be supporters of free trade generally, there remains a curious disconnect between this general support for free trade and the opposition to liberalization of trade with Cuba. Yet despite this perceived inconsistency, ideology remains consistent on both, thus we seek to test this exception to conservative support for liberalization. A combination of factors is at play to which make Cuba a special case in the ...

Socrates As Citizen?: The Implications Of Socratic Eros For Contemporary Models Of Citizenship, Jeremy John Mhire

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation evaluates the appropriateness of using Socrates as a model for contemporary citizenship. I examine the question of Socrates' civic character by inquiring about the relation of the philosopher (or political scientist) to the city (that is, to political life) without taking for granted that they share a common aim or purpose. Instead, I prepare the discussion with an examination of the treatment of Socrates by the comic poet Aristophanes in the Clouds. I suggest that Socrates' famed eros, his unwavering love of wisdom, was a problem, one that threatened the very foundations of political society. By conceiving of ...

LSU Master's Theses

The current literature on economic reform is fragmented and lacks a cohesive theoretical framework to fully explain the politics of neoliberal reform adoption. The multiple perspectives presented in the literature, including institutional, pluralist, macroeconomic, international pressures, and policy networks, create an incoherent explanation of economic liberalization. In an effort to more completely account for the political dynamics of the economic reform process, my analysis incorporates the primary variables supported by the literature on neoliberal reform within an informal institutions framework. My primary variable of interest is policy networks, and I support this with the theory of informal institutions while considering ...

Albert Camus's Meditative Ascent: A Search For Foundations In The Plague, Brian James Blanchard

LSU Master's Theses

Albert Camus's concept of absurdity states that human existence is fundamentally chaotic and meaningless. Despite this appraisal of existence, Camus tirelessly campaigned for human rights at a time when many intellectuals ignored the atrocities perpetrated by ideological compatriots. Scholars admire Camus's courage and foresight, but few have attempted to systematically examine Camus's philosophical development of values. Eric Voegelin argues that Camus's writings take the form of a philosophical meditation in which Camus conducted an analysis of existence through the medium of fictional creation. This meditation, which Voegelin likens to a Platonic periagoge, allowed Camus to establish ...

Assessing The Role Of Institutions In Ensuring Environmental Performance: A Cross-National Study Of Un Framework Convention On Climate Change, Swetasree Ghosh Roy

LSU Master's Theses

Although past research has emphasized the importance of international environmental agreements in redressing environmental degradation, systematic assessments of regime effects are missing. The central focus of this paper is assessing the effectiveness of international environmental agreements: do international environmental agreements actually improve environmental quality? Most of the research in the field of environmental protection has focused on the role of economic development and the political system. Several studies have found that the relationship between a countries wealth and some pollutants follow an inverted U-shaped curve, popularly known in the literature as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Again scholars have also ...

The Antipodes: On Rebellion, Michael Scott Robinson

LSU Master's Theses

This essay argues that the term rebellion applies to two similar but distinguishable experiences representative of the limits to human action and capacity. The political rebel is a man who rebels against an oppressive political regime. Opposing him is the metaphysical rebel whose action is inspired by a grievance against the nature of existence generally, as a human being, which he has interpreted to be oppressive. These contradicting inspirations are matched by juxtaposing consequences, exemplified through a literary analysis of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, and a historical analysis of Václav Havel and the Velvet Revolution.

Federalism, Checks And The Welfare State: A Cross National Analysis, Amanda Louise Beal

LSU Master's Theses

It is often asserted in the institutional literature that there is a trade-off between effective and efficient government. Effective government is often stipulated to be more representative, while efficient government is considered superior at passing legislation. This analysis critiques Arend Lijphart's theory that consensus democracies are more representative, and therefore, result in "kinder, gentler" democracies with more encompassing social policies. I hypothesize that more representative government - operationalized as having higher levels of fractionalization within the legislature, more federalism and more checks within the system - is actually more effective at translating the median voter's preference for occupationally dependent or ...

Anti-Americanism: An Exploration Of A Contested Concept In Western Europe, Gregory Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite its popular currency and salience, anti-Americanism is understudied and misunderstood by social scientists. Even within academia, studies of anti-Americanism are often polemic, and logically or methodologically flawed. Focusing on Western Europe, we argue that anti-Americanism is a public opinion phenomenon, and present a definition of anti-Americanism based on social psychology, and demonstrate how cognitive psychological processes shape anti-Americanism. We outline several predictors of anti-Americanism, processes of internal cognition, responses to international political events, patterns of interpersonal communication and information diffusion, and the contextual role of ideology. We also observe the important implications European anti-Americanism has for support international institutions ...

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My study focuses on the literature of democratic morality, with specific reference to the question of "heroic individualism." I attempt to elucidate the notion of heroic individualism by examining three modern democratic moralists whose work occupies the space between politics and literature: Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietzsche. In brief, I conclude that the central aspiration of heroic individualism is to bridge the gap between writing and action, the Text and the Voice. The dialogue among Rousseau, Carlyle, and Nietzsche reveals that the problem of writing as action is central to heroic-individualist morality. Each of these authors demonstrates ...

Government Growth In Latin America, Carlos Eduardo Costa

LSU Master's Theses

The scope of government spending has gained significant attention in comparative politics. Disaggregate level data has allowed researchers to examine the impact of electoral rules and party fragmentation on the nature of government spending. Findings supported by large-N empirical tests suggest that fragmented polities are more likely to observe a shift in government expenditures: away from expenditures on public goods and in the direction of transfers and subsidies. In this paper, I test the applicability of these findings to Latin America. Using empirical evidence based on 13 Latin American countries over a 17 year period, the findings of this paper ...